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As software supply chain attacks emerge as a point of concern in the wake of SolarWinds and Codecov  security incidents, Google is proposing a solution to ensure the integrity of software packages and prevent unauthorized modifications.  Called " Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts " (SLSA, and pronounced "salsa"), the end-to-end framework aims to secure the software development and deployment pipeline — i.e., the source ➞ build ➞ publish workflow — and  mitigate threats  that arise out of tampering with the source code, the build platform, and the artifact repository at every link in the chain. Google said SLSA is inspired by the company's own internal enforcement mechanism called Binary Authorization for Borg , a set of auditing tools that verifies code provenance and implements code identity to ascertain that the deployed production software is properly reviewed and authorized. "In its current state, SLSA is a set of incrementally adoptable

It's natural to get complacent with the status quo when things seem to be working. The familiar is comfortable, and even if something better comes along, it brings with it many unknowns. In cybersecurity, this tendency is countered by the fast pace of innovation and how quickly technology becomes obsolete, often overnight. This combination usually results in one of two things – organizations make less than ideal choices about the software and tools they're adding, or security leaders simply cannot stay abreast of new developments and opt to stay put with their existing stack. The problem is that once you let one update pass you by, you're suddenly miles behind. A new eBook from XDR provider Cynet ( download here ) offers insights into factors that are clear signs organizations need to upgrade their detection and response tools to stay with the times. The eBook highlights several factors and questions that companies can ask themselves to determine whether they are okay

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

Google has rolled out yet another update to Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux to fix four security vulnerabilities, including one zero-day flaw that's being exploited in the wild. Tracked as  CVE-2021-30554 , the high severity flaw concerns a  use after free vulnerability  in WebGL (aka Web Graphics Library), a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within the browser. Successful exploitation of the flaw could mean corruption of valid data, leading to a crash, and even execution of unauthorized code or commands. The issue was reported to Google anonymously on June 15, Chrome technical program manager Srinivas Sista  noted , adding the company is "aware that an exploit for CVE-2021-30554 exists in the wild." While it's usually the norm to limit details of the vulnerability until a majority of users are updated with the fix, the development comes less than 10 days after Google addressed another zero-day vulnerability exploited in act

A Middle Eastern advanced persistent threat (APT) group has resurfaced after a two-month hiatus to target government institutions in the Middle East and global government entities associated with geopolitics in the region in a rash of new campaigns observed earlier this month. Sunnyvale-based enterprise security firm Proofpoint attributed the activity to a politically motivated threat actor it tracks as TA402 , and known by other monikers such as  Molerats  and GazaHackerTeam. Based on its targeting and previous campaigns, TA402 is alleged to operate with motives that align with military or Palestinian state objectives. The threat actor is believed to be active for a decade, with a history of striking organizations primarily located in Israel and Palestine, and spanning multiple verticals such as technology, telecommunications, finance, academia, military, media, and governments. It's not clear what prompted the collective to cease its operations for two months, but Proofpoint

Threat actors with suspected ties to Iran have been found to leverage instant messaging and VPN apps like Telegram and Psiphon to install a Windows remote access trojan (RAT) capable of stealing sensitive information from targets' devices since at least 2015. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, which pieced together the activity, attributed the campaign to an advanced persistent threat (APT) group it tracks as Ferocious Kitten, a group that has singled out Persian-speaking individuals allegedly based in the country while successfully operating under the radar. "The targeting of Psiphon and Telegram, both of which are quite popular services in Iran, underlines the fact that the payloads were developed with the purpose of targeting Iranian users in mind," Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT)  said . "Moreover, the decoy content displayed by the malicious files often made use of political themes and involved images or videos of resistance bas

A solid password policy is the first line of defense for your corporate network. Protecting your systems from unauthorized users may sound easy on the surface, but it can actually be quite complicated. You have to balance password security with usability, while also following various regulatory requirements. Companies in the EU must have password policies that are compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Even if your company isn't based in the EU, these requirements apply if you have employees or customers residing in the EU or customers purchasing there. In this post, we will look at GDPR requirements for passwords and provide practical tips on how to design your password policy. Remember, even if GDPR isn't required for you now, the fundamentals of a data protection regulation plan can help strengthen your organization's security.  Password requirements for GDPR compliance You may be surprised to discover that the GDPR laws do not actually mentio

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a new executable image tampering attack dubbed "Process Ghosting" that could be potentially abused by an attacker to circumvent protections and stealthily run malicious code on a Windows system. "With this technique, an attacker can write a piece of malware to disk in such a way that it's difficult to scan or delete it — and where it then executes the deleted malware as though it were a regular file on disk," Elastic Security researcher Gabriel Landau  said . "This technique does not involve code injection, Process Hollowing, or Transactional NTFS (TxF)." Process Ghosting expands on previously documented  endpoint bypass  methods such as  Process Doppelgänging  and  Process Herpaderping , thereby enabling the veiled execution of malicious code that may evade anti-malware defenses and detection. Process Doppelgänging, analogous to  Process Hollowing , involves injecting arbitrary code in the address space of